Bureaucracy: A system of administration distinguished by its (1) clear hierarchy of authority, (2) rigid division of labor, (3) written and inflexible rules, regulations, and procedures, and (4) impersonal relationships. Once instituted, bureaucracies are difficult to dislodge or change.
And most of us are pretty certain it is the single thing standing between us and our ability to change our world, our organizations, and ourselves. In many cases it does add complexity, but we’ve also realized that it can be wrongly blamed for the lack of some very basic planning and storytelling.
The ironic part about human centered design is that many people don’t take a human centered approach in bringing it to their organizations. Take for example a leader who has the opportunity to attend a several day design thinking bootcamp for executives, and upon returning is eager to share their excitement by replicating many of the activities just as they saw them. What they’ve failed to realize is the difference between their bootcamp learning environment, and the everyday environment of their workplace. One is designed for safety, comfort, and retention of new concepts. The other is designed for management of diverse teams and skill sets, strategic decisions making, and execution of complex product rollouts. Expecting people to be as excited to adapt this new tool and mindset is simply a failure to pause and understand your personal users in this situation – your coworkers and peers. We’ve heard similar stories from new hires, managers, and senior executives from some of the biggest companies in the world.
Remember: Don’t focus on the story of design thinking, but rather the impact design thinking can have for your organization (tweet this).
Here are a few tools that will help you avoid bureaucratic tendencies while maintaining your sanity:
1. Find isolated parts of the organization where you can test in low-barrier ways. This might be a small team of people who are a little more flexible than the company at large, or it could be a short term project that is a little lower profile. Build the success stories and make those the focal point of what you share with the larger organization.
2. Start using it yourself in disguise. Allow people to see you demonstrating it and ask you how you’re doing it different. This changes the conversation from you pushing it on people, to them pulling the knowledge out of you. We had a student attend a multi-week studio project who works for a huge, highly structured media company in NYC. She went back to work and used the design thinking process on her next project without telling a soul. At the end of the 4-5 weeks, she called a lunch with her team and filled them in on her experiment, sharing what worked, the value that came out of it, and the things she would change next time. Then she finished the meeting asking if people would be interested in trying it again with the whole team on board. Not a single person said no.
3. Start with bite size best practices. Even the most forward thinking companies aren’t always quick to jump on the collaborative and exploratory track, so work your way into it. Start with small things like prepping better prompts for the next ideation session, or planning a half day field trip out of the office for your team to get some inspiration. Very few people are excited to adopt an entirely new way of thinking, but people are generally excited to break out of their norm in bite size ways.
4. Get a few key influencers on board. I wish I could say that you can change a culture of an organization entirely at a grass roots level, but it’s very difficult. When we’re working with an organization, whether it’s a public middle school in the Bronx, or a Fortune 50 bank, we make sure we’ve got a few influential leaders on board who are willing to not just advocate for change, but who are also the first to step up to a whiteboard when needed.
5. Figure out how to tell the story. In bureaucratic organizations, it’s easy to assume that your leadership team is not going to want to start sorting sticky notes or conducting interviews with customers. And in many cases, that’s probably true. But very few leaders would say they aren’t interested in understanding the customer needs, behaviors, emotions, and market trends that are going to dictate the future of their business. Very few leaders are going to say they don’t think innovation or evolving their offerings is important to growth. Bringing anything new to a culture requires some thoughtful storytelling, and building empathy around why your organization should care is the first step.
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